When Michael Collins floated above the furthest side of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, he knew he would be remembered as the lonely human in history. The feeling remembered without fear, almost exultant, thinking about everything on the other side of the moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface and, beyond that, all the creatures of the earth and all the humanity had built. On his side, as Collins wrote in his memoirs, he was “one more God only knows what.”
Half a century later, the famous empty lunar landscape is beginning to be more busy. NASA and other space agencies will not only send humans to the Moon for longer periods of time, researchers around the world are working in plans to make it the most powerful astrophysic laboratory in history. This could address the deepest questions we have asked. How did the first stars come on? Why has the universe evolved as he did? Is there anyone else?
“On the moon, we can think of concepts that, here on Earth, are completely impossible to realize,” says Jan Harms, an astronomer from the Institute of Sciences Gran Sasso in Italy. The conditions there seem almost a construction of avant -garde observatories that could answer some of the most disconcerting questions about the cosmos. The unique peace and tranquility of the moon, especially on the side that the earth never faces, could make it a portal to the history of the universe, from the first galaxies to the mysterious dark energy that extends …
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